Questions for Douglas Caddy

[John Simkin]

Doug, did you know that Robert “Butch” Merritt, claimed that Carl Shoffler offered him money to begin a sexual relationship with you. Shoffler approached Merritt in late June, 1972. Merritt was used by the police and the FBI to spy on the New Left. Merritt eventually infiltrated the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

The interesting thing about this story is that Carl Shoffler was the man who arrested the Watergate burglars. It is even more interesting when one realises that Shoffler should not have been on duty that night. Shoffler’s shift ended at 10.00 pm on 16th June, 1972. He volunteered for an extra shift and then parked his car close to the Watergate building. He was therefore in a good position to take the call and arrest the burglars.

It was after the Watergate burglary that Shoffler paid Merritt to start up a homosexual relationship with you. This is not the end of the story. Shortly after the Watergate break-in, Shoffler told his former commanding officer, Captain Edmund Chung, that the Watergate arrests were the result of a tip-off. He also revealed that he knew Alfred Baldwin. It was implied that Baldwin was the one who tipped him off about the break-in.

Shoffler also told Chung that if he ever made the whole story public, “his life wouldn’t be worth a nickel”.

Chung told his story to Sam Ervin’s Senate Committee but they decided to believe Shoffler who claimed that his former commanding officer made the story up in an attempt to blackmail him.

The Senate Committee also dismissed Merritt’s story. It was even claimed that it was clearly not true as “there was no reason to suspect that he (Doug Caddy) was anything but heterosexual”.

There is also another interesting aspect to this story. Merritt lived above a pornography shop at the corner of Columbia Road and Eighteenth Street. His landlord was Walter R. Riggin. It was later discovered that Riggin held sex parties. Two men who knew Riggin via these parties were Carl Bernstein and John Paisley.

According to a police report written by Lieutenant George F. Richards, Riggin’s sex parties were linked to intelligence gathering. Bernstein admitted that he had attended these parties and that he had accepted gifts from Riggin. However, it is not clear what Bernstein provided in return for these gifts.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Doug, did you know that Robert “Butch” Merritt, claimed.....

John, I admire your optimistic spirit. Without it neither Alfred Baldwin nor Douglas Caddy would have joined the forum, to the great delight of many members who appreciated the honesty and forthrightness that both these gentlemen displayed.

But it is entirely unrealistic to expect either man to engage further with the forum, given the incredibly shabby treatment they both received over on the Watergate forum. Ashton Gray's narcissistic ravings, his shallow, trivial, mean-spirited interrogations, and his persistently arrogant insistence that both these gentlemen are liars, has absolutely guaranteed that they will never return to this forum, if they have an ounce of self-respect.

[John Simkin]

John, I admire your optimistic spirit. Without it neither Alfred Baldwin nor Douglas Caddy would have joined the forum, to the great delight of many members who appreciated the honesty and forthrightness that both these gentlemen displayed.

But it is entirely unrealistic to expect either man to engage further with the forum, given the incredibly shabby treatment they both received over on the Watergate forum. Ashton Gray's narcissistic ravings, his shallow, trivial, mean-spirited interrogations, and his persistently arrogant insistence that both these gentlemen are liars, has absolutely guaranteed that they will never return to this forum, if they have an ounce of self-respect.

See the following for the first answer:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...=5670&st=90

[J. Raymond Carroll]

has absolutely guaranteed that they will never return to this forum, if they have an ounce of self-respect.

See the following for the first answer:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...=5670&st=90

Congratulations John. I am very happy to be proven wrong. In fact Mr. Baldwin has now answered a very important question, that he was not the one who betrayed the "burglars."

This coup in getting Mr. Baldwin back is no doubt a tribute to his confidence in you, and is in spite of the abuse he endured at the hands of Ashton Gray.

[Michael Hogan]

J. Raymond Carroll wrote today:

"Ashton Gray's narcissistic ravings, his shallow, trivial, mean-spirited interrogations, and his persistently arrogant insistence that both these gentlemen are liars,

has absolutely guaranteed that they will never return to this forum, if they have an ounce of self-respect.

(Emphasis mine)

Three hours later he follows up with:

"Congratulations John. I am very happy to be proven wrong. This coup in getting Mr. Baldwin back is no doubt a tribute to his confidence in you, and is in spite of the abuse he endured at the hands of Ashton Gray."

Carroll didn't even have the class to address his assertion and implication that, by Carroll's own words, Baldwin must not have an ounce of self-respect. I notice that no apology to Mr. Baldwin was offered.

The above is all too typical of Carroll's actions on this Forum. I remember when he threatened to leave if John Simkin did not discipline Brendan Slattery. When John said he would not, Carroll lamely joked his way back.

Most all of Carroll's posts are becoming somewhat of a joke.

Edited July 4, 2006 by Michael Hogan

[J. Raymond Carroll]

I remember when he threatened to leave if John Simkin did not discipline Brendan Slattery. When John said he would not, Carroll lamely joked his way back.

Hello Michael. Still have nothing useful to say? Not even a lame joke?

Of course it was only a matter of time before John Simkin did discipline Brendan Slattery. Too bad.

[Michael Hogan]

That was weeks after you demonstrated an inability to keep your word. I could try and go back and find your words. Seems like you were calling for Slattery's banishment. Did that happen? Of course not. Did you fail to live up to your promise in an unsuccessful attempt to pressure John? Of course.

You can rationalize all of your behaviors in the weakest and most misleading ways. The only person you convince is yourself.

Bottom line, you made a threat. It didn't work. You caved in. Here you still are.

And I see you still lack enough class to address your assertion of Mr. Baldwin "lacking an ounce of self-respect." Like I said, not even enough class to apologize. And not even the slightest attempt to stay on topic.

Too bad.

Edited July 4, 2006 by Michael Hogan

[J. Raymond Carroll]

And I see you still lack enough class to address your assertion of Mr. Baldwin "lacking an ounce of self-respect." Like I said, not even enough class to apologize.

Douglas Caddy and Alfred Baldwin have in common (besides having their names linked forever to the Watergate Saga) the fact that they both attained the highest level of academic achievent that is possible. It is safe to assume that they are both highly intelligent men.

Ashton Gray's narcissistic ravings, his shallow, trivial, mean-spirited interrogations, and his persistently arrogant insistence that both these gentlemen are liars, has absolutely guaranteed that they will never return to this forum, if they have an ounce of self-respect.

See the following for the first answer:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...=5670&st=90

There is a kind of "twinkle in the eye" in John's post that makes me think that Douglas Caddy will be rejoining us, and I hope that happens.

Little did I know when I posted my prediction that Alfred Baldwin, the man himself, had posted on the forum almost a day earlier. I have no doubt that Alfred Baldwin (like Douglas Caddy) has told nothing but the truth since he joined the forum, so I would speak nothing but the truth to him. At the time I made the already- falsified - prediction, I held an honest belief, on what seemed to me to be reasonable grounds, that Messrs Caddy & Baldwin would not return to the forum. I don't think I would have, if I was in their situation.

But I did not say, as Michael Hogan falsely claims above, that Mr. Baldwin was "lacking an ounce of self-respect." Mr. Hogan just made up that quotation out of his own head. What I actually said was something quite different, as the reader can see from the previous insert. Since I honestly believed that neither gentleman would grace the forum again, I think both Mr. Baldwin and Caddy are smart enough to figure out that, given that belief, I could not possibly have intended to insult either of them at that time.

And I am sure they are also quite capable of figuring out that I have not the slightest inclination to do so now, either.

And not even the slightest attempt to stay on topic.

Too bad.

Michael, You are referring to yourself here, right?

Edited July 5, 2006 by J. Raymond Carroll

[Michael Hogan]

You are such a crybaby. Go back to my original post #80. I quoted your remarks about Baldwin and Caddy verbatim. In your response, you mentioned nothing about them, just an attack on me. Hence my statement that you were off topic. Then you have the temerity to whine that I am misquoting you and suggest that I am off topic.

Like a little kid in the schoolyard, you always insist in getting in the last word. You do it with everyone, not just me. I know Brendan Slattery rubs a lot of people the wrong way (myself included), but personally I find your brand of selective responses much more offensive. At least Slattery addresses the issues when confronted.

You, on the other hand, just try to twist things around to suit yourself. Whatever you can't spin, you ignore. I'm sure everyone on this Forum is glad that Mr. Baldwin (and hopefully Mr. Caddy) is still participating. And yes, they are intelligent men. I'm sure they can see right through your weak, unconvincing attempt to explain how you didn't insult them.

At least Ashton Gray was man enough to apologize.

I never liked bullies. Especially bullies with no game.

See ya around.

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

In a bid to get this important thread back on track, a few comments on what John has posted:

Doug, did you know that Robert “Butch” Merritt, claimed that Carl Shoffler offered him money to begin a sexual relationship with you. Shoffler approached Merritt in late June, 1972. Merritt was used by the police and the FBI to spy on the New Left. Merritt eventually infiltrated the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

Apparently Shoffler didn't just approach Merritt out of the blue, as "Butch" had previously served as an informant for Shoffler. That would explain why Shoffler felt comfortable enough to make such an alleged approach to Merritt.

Moreover, Douglas Caddy's sexual orientation might not have been the closely held secret, at that time, we have all presumed. The following is from:

http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1534942/posts

Merritt claimed Shoffler told him that Caddy was gay and a Communist sympathizer and asked him to establish a homosexual relationship with him and find out everything he could about his private life. Shoffler denied Merritt’s allegation, and some researchers have accepted Shoffler’s denial, partly because at one time it was believed that Shoffler had spoken falsely in telling Merritt that Caddy was gay. Caddy, however, is in fact openly gay, and has recently given an interview and written an article for the gay rights magazine Advocate wherein he states his belief in Merritt’s allegation. Caddy also states that he felt the judge handling the case, John Sirica, attempted to use his sexual orientation as leverage to intimidate him into violating attorney-client confidentiality by revealing information such as who had provided the burglars their legal counsel, a question Caddy refused to answer because it would have implicated his client Hunt. This is not precisely confirmation of Merritt’s allegation, but it does at least lend his story credibility and reinforce questions about Shoffler’s role in Watergate and his motive for calling the Post.

It is suggested by the research posted at the above website that aside from being the arresting officer, in virtually inexplicable circumstances, it was Shoffler who alerted the Washington Post of the arrests. Hence, he wasn't just content to make the arrests, but ensured that it received publicity by arranging for a Post reporter to be present during the arraignments of the burglars. The Shoffler angle gets more interesting later in this post.

The interesting thing about this story is that Carl Shoffler was the man who arrested the Watergate burglars. It is even more interesting when one realises that Shoffler should not have been on duty that night. Shoffler’s shift ended at 10.00 pm on 16th June, 1972. He volunteered for an extra shift and then parked his car close to the Watergate building. He was therefore in a good position to take the call and arrest the burglars.

It was after the Watergate burglary that Shoffler paid Merritt to start up a homosexual relationship with you. This is not the end of the story. Shortly after the Watergate break-in, Shoffler told his former commanding officer, Captain Edmund Chung, that the Watergate arrests were the result of a tip-off. He also revealed that he knew Alfred Baldwin. It was implied that Baldwin was the one who tipped him off about the break-in.

Shoffler may have had several other avenues to learn in advance of the Watergate burglary, aside from Baldwin, as we'll soon see.

By referring to Chung only as "his former commanding officer," readers might wrongly infer that Chung was a policeman higher up than Shoffler in the food chain. He was not. Carl Shoffler and Edmund Chung had served together at the U.S. Army Security Agency in Warrenton, Virginia. As noted by our own A.J. Weberman's site:

Carl Shoffler met with Edmund Chung again in mid-April 1973. Carl Shoffler stated that Edmund Chung asked him if there was any way Watergate could be made to look like a set up, and suggested that Carl Shoffler might say that he had prior knowledge of the prospective arrests. Edmund Chung allegedly offered Carl Shoffler a large sum of money. Carl Shoffler told this researcher: "There was a conflicting viewpoint on that. My interpretation of his offer was different than his feeling toward the offer. The one thing that is clear to both sides was that there was an offer made. The perception of why the offer was made was in dispute." Carl Shoffler had no idea who was behind Edmund Chung.

The Senate Select Committee on Campaign Activities interviewed Edmund Chung. Edmund Chung denied any knowledge of efforts either to conceal facts related to Watergate, or to induce others to alter their testimony. He said he called Carl Shoffler after seeing his name in the newspapers and had dinner with him. Edmund Chung told the staff that there was a second evening spent with Carl Shoffler in mid-April 1973, but that on this occasion, Carl Shoffler did not have much to say about Watergate and seemed obsessed with the idea that Edmund Chung was a CIA agent. Edmund Chung denied being a CIA employee. The employer of Edmund Chung, the U.S. Army Security Agency, was interviewed about him. His superior advised that the military duties of Edmund Chung had been classified and that Edmund Chung held a Top Secret Crypto clearance. Edmund Chung's superior claimed he was unaware of a Chung/CIA connection. [Minority Report SSCIA Investigation of Advance Knowledge of Illegal Political Espionage.]

Shoffler also told Chung that if he ever made the whole story public, “his life wouldn’t be worth a nickel”.

Chung told his story to Sam Ervin’s Senate Committee but they decided to believe Shoffler who claimed that his former commanding officer made the story up in an attempt to blackmail him.

It would be helpful to know the putative purpose of this alleged blackmail attempt. In the meantime, again quoting from:

http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1534942/posts

The Post was brought into the Watergate investigation the morning of the arrests at 4 AM by a call from arresting officer Carl Shoffler. Shoffler claimed that he called the Post because the suspects weren’t talking and he hoped the newspapers would put some pressure on them. Shoffler, as mentioned before, had an interest in sexual espionage files DC Police Captain Roy Blick supplied to McCord’s CIA superior Paul Gaynor.

The Senate Committee also dismissed Merritt’s story. It was even claimed that it was clearly not true as “there was no reason to suspect that he (Doug Caddy) was anything but heterosexual”.

And yet there is reason to suspect that Mr. Caddy intuited otherwise, for as previously noted above: "Caddy also states that he felt the judge handling the case, John Sirica, attempted to use his sexual orientation as leverage to intimidate him into violating attorney-client confidentiality by revealing information such as who had provided the burglars their legal counsel, a question Caddy refused to answer because it would have implicated his client Hunt."

Is it possible that Sirica knew of Mr. Caddy's orientation, but the Senators investigating his involvement in Watergate were not advised of this? Or in making the statement “there was no reason to suspect that he (Doug Caddy) was anything but heterosexual,” were the Senators simply impeaching the credibility of "Butch" Merrritt to preserve the credibility of Carl Shoffler?

There is also another interesting aspect to this story. Merritt lived above a pornography shop at the corner of Columbia Road and Eighteenth Street. His landlord was Walter R. Riggin. It was later discovered that Riggin held sex parties. Two men who knew Riggin via these parties were Carl Bernstein and John Paisley.

According to a police report written by Lieutenant George F. Richards, Riggin’s sex parties were linked to intelligence gathering. Bernstein admitted that he had attended these parties and that he had accepted gifts from Riggin. However, it is not clear what Bernstein provided in return for these gifts.

It may get stranger still. Again citing from:

http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1534942/posts

The Plumbers’ assigned liaison with the CIA was John Paisley, Director of the Agency’s Office of Security (OS), a unit where McCord had served under Hunt’s longtime friend Howard Osborn. The OS unit was responsible for among other things hunting for Soviet moles. Theories that Paisley may have been a mole would be aired after he disappeared in 1978 under suspicious circumstances, with classified documents found on his boat and his death declared on the basis of a corpse that did not match his physical description and had been killed in a manner which could not definitively be ruled a result of suicide or homicide. It is not necessary for present purposes to explore theories about Paisley’s controversial fate, which has been obscured by anonymous and otherwise unreliable sources, but sticking to the known facts let it suffice to say, he is an interesting individual and his involvement with the Plumbers is noteworthy. According to Paisley’s widow, he, Osborn, and the Plumbers met frequently in the latter half of 1971. When the Watergate arrests came to the CIA’s attention the case would initially be assigned to Osborn.

Concurrent with OS’ involvement in the Plumbers operation, OS began lending agents to Secret Service agent Alfred Wong, who handled technical services at the White House. In this capacity Wong was in charge of the White House taping system that would later play such a prominent role in the Watergate investigation. Under Wong overall supervision of the Presidential taping system was assigned to former Air Force officer Alexander Butterfield, who earlier in his career had been an aide to Joseph Califano, now Edward Bennett Williams’ law partner and like Williams a Democratic National Committee attorney. Butterfield and Califano like Williams would both play significant roles in the Watergate investigation.

One OS agent Wong “borrowed” in October 1971 was McCord, who had “retired” from the CIA four months after Hunt joined Mullen. At CIA McCord had worked in an OS branch called the Security Research Staff (SRS), involved in some of the CIA’s most exotic operations, including contracting Mafia assets to assassinate Fidel Castro, conducting LSD mind-control experiments, and using prostitutes for sexual blackmail as well as psychological profiling of targets’ sexual behavior patterns. Upon Wong’s recommendation, McCord was assigned to handle technical security matters for the Nixon re-election committee (the Committee to Re-elect the President aka CRP, CREEP). In this capacity McCord came to work with the Plumbers and Hunt.

To tighten the Agency circle even further, James Di Eugenio has noted elsewhere:

Shoffler’s background could supply some clues. Prior to joining the Washington force, Shoffler worked at the National Security Agency’s Vint Hill Farm communications post responsible for intercepting electronic traffic from Washington’s Embassy Row. According to a former colleague at Vint Hill, Shoffler told him afterwards that he indeed was tipped off about the Watergate break-in and if that part of the scandal was made public, "his life wouldn’t be worth a nickel." Shoffler, of course, denied he made that statement. Shoffler had also been close to CIA heavy Paul Gaynor, internal security chief at the Agency and head of the top secret SRS unit, the place where James McCord used to work before joining up with the White House. As Hougan relates, the Securities Research Staff was primarily involved with "security risks" of all kinds against the Agency. Gaynor worked closely with Captain Roy Blick of the Washington Police Department. Blick was a notorious source for CIA Directors Allen Dulles and Richard Helms. Shoffler’s nickname among fellow police officers was "Little Blick".

Apparently the Watergate crime scene was crawling with Agency personnel, those who arrested them had their own direct ties to the Agency, including at least one of those arrested, and the liaison assigned to those arrested was CIA's John Paisley.

It gets curiouser and curiouser.

If we could redirect our attention away from flame wars to concentrate upon the actual facts on offer from a variety of sources, we might yet plumb the depths of something that has previously escaped a definitive investigation.

Edited July 5, 2006 by Robert Charles-Dunne

[John Simkin]

Robert, great post as usual. Who is Fedora? I would very much like him/her to join the Forum.

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

Robert, great post as usual. Who is Fedora? I would very much like him/her to join the Forum.

Sorry, John, but I don't know who cheekily appropriated this moniker from the annals of spydom. However, the details provided seem entirely consonant with what we've learned in the interim, and Fedora uses them in a moderate and methodical fashion, which is why I thought it safe to cite the material. Perhaps an inquiry to the Free Republic website would yield the info you seek.

[Douglas Caddy]

Doug, did you know that Robert “Butch” Merritt, claimed that Carl Shoffler offered him money to begin a sexual relationship with you. Shoffler approached Merritt in late June, 1972. Merritt was used by the police and the FBI to spy on the New Left. Merritt eventually infiltrated the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

The interesting thing about this story is that Carl Shoffler was the man who arrested the Watergate burglars. It is even more interesting when one realises that Shoffler should not have been on duty that night. Shoffler’s shift ended at 10.00 pm on 16th June, 1972. He volunteered for an extra shift and then parked his car close to the Watergate building. He was therefore in a good position to take the call and arrest the burglars.

It was after the Watergate burglary that Shoffler paid Merritt to start up a homosexual relationship with you. This is not the end of the story. Shortly after the Watergate break-in, Shoffler told his former commanding officer, Captain Edmund Chung, that the Watergate arrests were the result of a tip-off. He also revealed that he knew Alfred Baldwin. It was implied that Baldwin was the one who tipped him off about the break-in.

Shoffler also told Chung that if he ever made the whole story public, “his life wouldn’t be worth a nickel”.

Chung told his story to Sam Ervin’s Senate Committee but they decided to believe Shoffler who claimed that his former commanding officer made the story up in an attempt to blackmail him.

The Senate Committee also dismissed Merritt’s story. It was even claimed that it was clearly not true as “there was no reason to suspect that he (Doug Caddy) was anything but heterosexual”.

There is also another interesting aspect to this story. Merritt lived above a pornography shop at the corner of Columbia Road and Eighteenth Street. His landlord was Walter R. Riggin. It was later discovered that Riggin held sex parties. Two men who knew Riggin via these parties were Carl Bernstein and John Paisley.

According to a police report written by Lieutenant George F. Richards, Riggin’s sex parties were linked to intelligence gathering. Bernstein admitted that he had attended these parties and that he had accepted gifts from Riggin. However, it is not clear what Bernstein provided in return for these gifts.

John, are you not aware that I covered this subject in this very thread on February 5, 2006? Why your sudden discovery of this information? I notice that your tag team partner, Ashton Gray, wasted no time, based on your posting, of spinning a new fantasy that I knew Washington police officer Carl Shoffler and Robert “Butch” Merritt. I knew neither of these of men. If you and he wish to delude yourselves otherwise, be my guest. I am beginning to be thoroughly amused of your and Ashton’s wide-of-the-mark postings. The more outlandish the accusations and insinuations, the greater the chance that the monetary advance on my new book will be increased as you and Ashton jointly transform me into a major “key player” in the Watergate scandal. However, don’t expect me to share my monetary advance with you both as a result of your adversarial public relations work in my behalf, especially since the Forum’s credibility is the ultimate victim of your tag team fantasy strategy.

Almost all of your posting in question draws directly upon the writing of Jim Hougan in his book, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA. I invite Forum members and readers of this thread to contrast pages 320 to 323 in Hougan’s book with what you have posted. In the past in your scholarly writings in the Forum you have been fastidious in citing source materials to support statements that you make, which is why they are so widely read with anticipation. Why then did you omit attribution to Hougan of what you wrote above?

Below is the February 5, 2006 posting that I made in this thread on this subject, which somehow escaped your attention:

Not only is Mark Felt's role as Deep Throat left out of the FBI memorandum of 5/23/1973 but also omitted is the evidence that Felt was the primary cause of the Watergate coverup.

The evidence is as follows: I was retained by Hunt and Liddy on June 17, the day of the burglary. On June 28, 11 days later, while I was in the U.S. Court House working on my clients' case, I was served with a subpoena to appear Forthwith before the federal grand jury. Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Campbell physically pulled me by my arm into the grand jury room. Over the next three weeks I was to testify five times before the grand jury. I refused to answer a number of questions that I believed violated the attorney-client privilege but did so ultimately after being held in contempt of court by Judge Sirica and the contempt citation being affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals.

All of these events so early in the case were reported by Woodward and Bernstein in the Washington Post. These events had the effect of convincing my clients that they could not receive a fair trial if I as their attorney were being so badly treated. So they embarked on the coverup.

Operating behind the scenes and as an instigator of my being served with a subpoena on June 28, 1972, was Mark Felt. The role of the FBI towards me, under Felt's direction, is described in a two-part article in The Advocate of Feb. 23 and March 9, 1977 titled, Revelations of a Gay Informant: I Spied for the FBI. The article is part-interview with and part-reporting concerning the gay informant, Carl Robert 'Butch' Merritt. Merritt had been employed by the FBI, under Felt's direction, and by the Washington, D.C. police, to infiltrate and spy on the New Left, which was then engaged in vocal dissent against the Vietnam war. (Felt was subsequently indicted and convicted for some of his activities against the New Left. More on this later.)

The following is excerpted from the 1977 Advocate article:

Two days after the Watergate burglary, Carl Shoffler (one of Merritt's former police contacts) turned up with Sgt. Paul Leeper (these officers had been two of the three to have arrested the burglars) with what Merritt recalls as an offer of ˜the biggest, most important assignment" he'd ever had.

The officers, Merritt said, asked if he knew one of the Watergate attorneys. ˜They said he was gay." Merritt did not. They asked if I could get to know him. I asked them why. We'd like you to get as close as possible, they said, to find out all you can about his private life, even what he eats. Merritt says he explained that even if the attorney was gay, it wouldn't be likely that he could arrange to meet him. They said I would be paid quite well, that they weren't talking about dimes and quarters, that they were talking about ˜really big money".

Merritt says that he refused the offer, but that police kept returning to him with the same request, as late as December 1972, months after the city's police claimed to have ended their Watergate investigation.

Police, Merritt says, also tried to recruit him to inform on the gay community. He says he refused these offers as well.

The police and the FBI, Merritt charges, began to harass him soon after he was dropped by the bureau. ˜They threatened my life, broke into my apartment at least three times, they tried to plant drugs on me, they tapped my phone," Merritt charges.

Jim Hougan, in his 1984 book Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA, wrote about Merritt's allegations:

"If we are to believe the disaffected informant, [police officer] Shoffler told him to establish a homosexual relationship with Douglas Caddy, stating falsely that Caddy was gay and a supporter of Communist causes."

Further information can be found on the following links:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...16/ai_n15396922

http://www.advocate.com/special_feature.asp?id=19186

Edited July 8, 2006 by Douglas Caddy

[John Simkin]

John, are you not aware that I covered this subject in this very thread on February 5, 2006? Why your sudden discovery of this information? I notice that your tag team partner, Ashton Gray, wasted no time, based on your posting, of spinning a new fantasy that I knew Washington police officer Carl Shoffler and Robert “Butch” Merritt. I knew neither of these of men. If you and he wish to delude yourselves otherwise, be my guest. I am beginning to be thoroughly amused of your and Ashton’s wide-of-the-mark postings. The more outlandish the accusations and insinuations, the greater the chance that the monetary advance on my new book will be increased as you and Ashton jointly transform me into a major “key player” in the Watergate scandal. However, don’t expect me to share my monetary advance with you both as a result of your adversarial public relations work in my behalf, especially since the Forum’s credibility is the ultimate victim of your tag team fantasy strategy.

Almost all of your posting in question draws directly upon the writing of Jim Hougan in his book, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA. I invite Forum members and readers of this thread to contrast pages 320 to 323 in Hougan’s book with what you have posted. In the past in your scholarly writings in the Forum you have been fastidious in citing source materials to support statements that you make, which is why they are so widely read with anticipation. Why then did you omit attribution to Hougan of what you wrote above?

It is true that I sometimes cite my sources in my postings. On other occasions I do not do this. This is no conspiracy. It all depends on if the posting is part of a book I am writing.

The story about Shofler, Chung and Merritt does appear in Jim Hougan’s Secret Agenda. In my opinion it is the best book written so far on Watergate. However, Hougan did make mistakes in the book and like other investigators was unable to fully explain what Watergate was really about.

For example, on page 321 he writes that he does not believe the Merritt story because: "If we are to believe the disaffected informant, Shoffler told him to establish a homosexual relationship with Douglas Caddy, stating falsely that Caddy was gay and a supporter of Communist causes. In fact, Caddy was about as conservative as they come, and there was no reason to suspect that he was anything but heterosexual.”

Hougan was wrong about your homosexuality. Those on the right would no doubt say that you are now a “supporter of Communist causes”. Maybe it is time to reassess the information supplied by Merritt.

I also find Captain Edmund Chung’s testimony very interesting. Why did Sam Ervin and his committee believe Shofler over Chung? Why did they not ask any questions about Operation Sandwedge? Is it possible that like the Warren Report, Ervin was part of the cover-up?

[Dawn Meredith]

Mr Caddy:

I respect you for returning here. Can we all agree on one thing: that the purpose of this forum is to arrive at the truth? It is my sole purpose. And your post above certainly apears to be sincere. I do not know how long you have been reading this forum but I joined in 10/04 and the flaming and name calling drove me away several times. In fact I begged for rules that would later be established regarding the manner in which posters should treat each other. With respect and civility.

You do not have to answer anyone's questions here, but I do have a few rather broad ones:

1. Do you believe that the full truth about Watergate was aired during the hearings?

2. Are you personally satisfied the that Dorothy Hunt was killed in an "accident? on 12/8/72?

3. Do you believe that there is a free press in this counrty, uncontrolled by Operation Mockingbird.?

4. If not, do you believe that Bob Woodward is/was an Op Mockingbird journalist?

Thank you. If you have covered any of these questions in the past I apologise for any repititon of same.

(Most of us do not possess photographic memories, so occassionally I ask a question that has been alreadly dealt with. )

Dawn